15 Top Websites to Find Free Images For Your Content Marketing
Finding an online library stocked with pictures that are of high quality and available to use for free can be a daunting task. All the effort you are putting in selecting your search words seem to only yield images that either vaguely agree with your needs or are completely irrelevant. This can waste a lot of your time and get you really worked up.
If your job involves finding free images online on a regular basis, then having a free image directory would be a smart move. A free image directory allows you to easily and quickly access pictures that are not just relevant and top quality but add more meaning, taste, and eloquence to your message. And saves you hours.
Let me get you started on creating your own free image library. Below is a fairly exhaustive list of the best websites to find free images online:
1. Picjumbo.com
First, there are no restrictions – you do not need to credit the author when using images from this website. New photos are uploaded every day and organized accordingly. They have amazing pictures with a wide range e.g. roads, food, fashion, wedding, technology, business etc.
2. Pexels.com
This is one of the largest free image directories. It has collated photos from many other free image sites and put them under one roof. So if you are in a rush, then this will work very well with you.
3. Unsplash.com
A small one-column site that was built on tumblr. They post 10 fantastic images every ten days. No need to be registered. You can subscribe to receive photos directly into your inbox.
4. Flickr.com
Besides the large collection of high quality photos, Flickr gives you the option of sharing and saving your photos. With it, you can organize all of your pictures and not worry about losing them. You can also edit your pictures. One thing that is encouraged when using someone else’s photo is to ensure that you link your picture to them. You will need to register as a member to be able to gain access to the variety of options offer by Flickr.
5. FreePhotosBank.com
Easy to download photos. They focus more on abstract shots, architecture, landscape, nature, backgrounds and patterns etc. You do not any to create an account.
6. FreeMediaGoo.com
You can credit them if you want to but you don’t need to. They upload high quality illustrations of backgrounds and many other photos. They have plenty of visual mediums you can choose from. Images have no restrictions.
7. Creative Commons Search
is an online tool that allows you to find resources you can share, use, modify of remix. You can use find things to use for commercial purposes as well. No registration required. It is a convenient search engine. However you need to find out about the copyright terms of the image before using it.
8. Picsearch.com
It is great it doesn’t offer a clear division for royalty-free CC images. It is a useful search engine especially for those who don’t know exactly what they are looking for. Picsearch will help your search by indexing pages for you.
9. Pixabay
Here, photos are uploaded by users as in Creative Commons. You can search and sort your pictures. There are no image restrictions. It offers a range of high quality photos and thought to be one of the best internal search engine sites.
10. Blogphoto.tv
Plenty of free images. The disadvantage is the loose image restriction that comes with it. In Blog photo, there is more than just getting you the photo you need. They offer resources such as templates, articles planners etc. to help you grow your digital footprint. In addition to that, there are articles published weekly as well as live interactive shows with media mogul to make you outstanding at whatever it is you are trying to achieve.
11. Gratisography.com
For high quality photos with no image restrictions whatsoever, then this is the resource for you. These are high-resolution pictures taken by Ryan McGuire . You can find them on one page, not group. Just scroll down as the page loads and pick the one want. You are not required to credit the owner.
12. Sxc.hu
There is a variety of image restrictions. However, they offer a massive selection of images covering a wide spectrum including abstract, events, architecture etc. You can share photos whenever and however you want. Sorting can sometimes be a little difficult. The good news is that the search tool is straightforward and getting what you need is simple and fast.
13. DeviantArt
With over thirty million registered users, Deviant Art is the leading community in free image online communities. The work of photographers is under Creative Commons. You can use their images as long as you give them credit. There is wealth of high-resolution photos.
14. Photodune
They offer the best picture at reasonably low price. They have a collection of over four million. If you want your website to stand out then use Photodune.
15. GettyImages
This is probably the largest place to find free images online. In one month they upload up to thirty five million photos. They have a wonderful collection of people and capture different activities so perfectly. If you want to get the picture, click on the icon on it and then paste the code onto your target page.
These tools come in very handy whenever you are in need of a photo. You no longer have to hassle with Google trying a dozen keywords to find just one. These websites allow you access to a variety of relevant and high-resolution pictures.
Guest Author: Amy Cowen manages writers at Aussiessay.com. She is an essay writing professional with over 5 years experience. Also she is very enthusiastic about all marketing and social media tools that can help a lot in everyday life and work.
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3 Steps to Creating a Powerful Email Marketing Campaign Through LinkedIn
Imagine you were at a networking event, and you spot someone you don’t know but would like to connect with. Maybe she runs a very successful business you would like to model yours after, a potential joint venture partner or perhaps a journalist who covers stories in your industry.
Would you ever walk up to this person and request them to promote your business, write an article or request for his or her time?
And if you do happen to try your luck, chances of them fulfilling your request would be little to none simply because you haven’t built a relationship with them.
Same goes for LinkedIn, I see so many people making the fatal mistake of promoting/pitching their product or service to me as soon as I connect with them. Quite frankly it’s lazy, it’s unprofessional, and it’s highly unlikely to get a response.
It might seem like common sense, but I can’t tell you how many people I see squandering this opportunity by sending brief or automated messages that don’t give people any meaningful reason to respond or engage.
This in turn can potentially burn the relationship with that person, have them report you to LinkedIn and even disconnect with you.
There are no short cuts to marketing success, before you start selling anything to anyone in today’s business world you must first build a relationship with them, showcase why you’re the expert and build the necessary trust for them to listen.
Now the amazing thing about LinkedIn is that it allows you to connect one-on-one with nearly anyone in the world, and then email market to them once there in your network.
If properly executed this can help you get your marketing message in front of 100’s if not 1000’s of key decision makers in your industry every single month.
I don’t know about you but I can’t think of any other social media platform that gives you the same capabilities!!
Below I’ve provided you a 3 step process on how to create a powerful email marketing campaign through LinkedIn, so you can start turning your connections into leads and sales for your business.
1. Segment your contacts
In today’s marketing world, it is more important than ever to reach out effectively to your customer. To do so, the keyword to focus here is on “relevance“. For example, a person in an executive role requires a different piece of content than someone in an intern role. What resonates with one audience doesn’t necessarily resonate with another.
Many people aren’t aware that you can segment your connections into topic categories within LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to segment (classify) your connections by subject areas. LinkedIn refers to this progress as “tagging”.
Tagging allows you to organize your connections by industry or subject. This is quite useful as it allows you to then tailor your messages to your network so they are most relevant to your members. Before you send your next email take one step back and segment your existing contacts to ensure everything you send is as targeted and personalized as possible.
2. End in mind
Once you have your contacts segmented, your next step is to design your call to action. This is the process of starting with the end in mind and really thinking about what action or step you would like your contacts to take once you have built a relationship with them.
This could be downloading a whitepaper, attending one of your webinars, phone meeting or even a face-to-face meeting. It really depends on the price for your product/service, target demographic and your company sales cycle.
For example at Linkfluencer, our call to action is a free LinkedIn webinar or a download of our E-book. This works particularly well for us because it allows us to educate our audience and showcase our methodology on how they can leverage LinkedIn within their business.
What action or step would you like your contacts to take once you’ve build a relationship with them?
3. The LinkedIn email marketing campaign
Now that you have your contacts segmented and designed your call to action, the 3rd and final step is to create an email marketing campaign where you provide targeted and very relevant content to your connections through a series of emails prior to promoting your call to action.
The purpose of the emails in the sequence is to establish you as the subject matter expert and build trust with your target market whilst remaining top of mind. These emails could include:
- Sending a link to an article that is relevant to them and their industry
- Sharing a business tip/strategy
- Download to your whitepaper
It’s about adding value before pitching your products or services. I essence it’s just common sense. It’s a lot like dating!
Author: Alex is an entrepreneur and founder of Linkfluencer, the world’s leading online community for LinkedIn training. He loves playing basketball, travelling and covering the latest stories on entrepreneurship. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook
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Missed the last Webinar? – Discover the 3 Steps To LinkedIn Mastery
Don’t worry we are running another one soon. It’s at a new time that will allow those of you who were sleeping at the last one to get a look in!
Over the past couple of months I’ve received a ton of emails from readers asking me to share more insight in and around LinkedIn so I’ve decided to hold another webinar with Alex Pirouz, founder of Linkfluencer.
The first one I held a few months back was well received with over 3000 people registering for the session. Click here to register
An In-Depth Guide on How to Create Awesome Visual Content That Gets Noticed
Would it sound awfully cliché if I were to start off this post by saying content is king?
I know … you’ve likely heard it about a million times.
But what about this one: visual content is king.
As it turns out, in this day and age, people care a lot more about visual content than they do about text. And data confirms. Various studies report quite exciting stats regarding visual content and its impact on the way humans are predisposed to consume information.
For instance, the human brain is 60,000 times faster at consuming visual content than plain ol’ text. And it’s not only that we’re more efficient at devouring images, but we also simply like them better – almost two times better (94 percent – that’s how many more total views articles containing images get in comparison to those that don’t contain images).
Visual content is also the hit on social media. It’s reported that photos account for 75 percent of all content posted to Facebook, and the engagement rate on them is a staggering 87 percent (other posts receive no more than four percent). So what’s the main takeaway from all this data?
Simple. Visuals matter.
If you’re not incorporating any sort of visual aspects into your content, you’re missing out. And since you already know the data at this point, you’re missing out knowingly. How’s that for bad news?
But this post isn’t actually a get-you-up-to-speed kind of publication. It’s a tutorial. Therefore, let’s go over the individual steps and examples of how to create visual content, what tools to use, and what principles to focus on.
Here is how to create awesome visual content that gets noticed.
The goal of visualizing your content
Content marketing isn’t an easy game to play, and even though it’s reported that 93 percent of marketers take part in some form of content marketing, only 42 percent of them consider themselves effective at it.
So let’s be honest for a minute. At the end of the day, the meat is still what matters the most. This means that if the core message that your publication/post conveys is subpar, no amount of great visuals will make it popular.
If, on the other hand, you do know that what you’re publishing is worth of your audience’s time, good visuals can be the difference between making the piece mildly well received vs. making it a true hit.
Think of your content as a car engine, and the visuals as a supercharger. There’s no point in putting a supercharger on a weak engine. Yes, you will gain some power and make the car a bit faster. But the real fun starts when you put a supercharger on an already powerful engine. This is what gives you true performance. And it’s the same story with content.
So in short, here are some of the things you can achieve with good visuals put on a great piece of content:
- You can grab the visitor’s attention right away (remember, we process visual content 60,000 times faster).
- You make the content look great when shared on social media, provided your site supports Twitter Cards or other social media APIs.
- You give the visitor a visual cue to recognize that piece of content wherever they see it on the web (when someone shares it).
- You can use visuals to separate different sections within one larger article.
- You can aid yourself when explaining complex ideas, by giving them an easily digestible form.
- You get to make your content appear unique in general – something really difficult to achieve with text-only content.
Types of blog post visuals + how to create them
Sorry if some of them sound a bit obvious, but I just want to keep the message complete:
1. Screenshots
A great screenshot goes a long way, and especially if you want to illustrate part of a how-to post or a tutorial, or to present an example of something.
That being said, screenshots are also the easiest type of images to mess up. The common problems include:
a. Distorted aspect ratios:
b. Bad and hard to read text overlays:
c. Screenshots scaled badly and thus completely unreadable:
This is the biggest issue of them all.
Luckily, those are all quite easy to fix if you have the right tool at your disposal. My favorite one is called Lightshot. It’s free and can be downloaded as a stand-alone app for Mac and PC, as well as a browser plugin.
In short, it just takes over the native print screen feature in your computer. So the way you work with it, is just press the Print Screen button on PC or whatever it is on Mac and then use the on-screen controls to crop the area you want to capture.
Some general rules to follow:
- Crop only the minimal area you need. Having unnecessary details in the screenshot will only make the message less clear.
- Use annotations to point to the important parts (feature in Lightshot).
- When taking a screenshot of a webpage, use your browser’s zoom-in feature to improve readability. Usually available under the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl +” or “Command +”.
Example of a good screenshot:
2. Simple animated GIFs (aka. pimped-out screenshots)
Contrary to popular belief, creating those is actually super simple and you don’t need to know anything about animation in order to pull it off.
There are loads of free tools out there that can help you. The one I like to use is called LICEcap.
It’s a really easy to use little tool. It literally consists of just a see-through window and two buttons.
What you do is resize the window to whatever you want to capture, click Record, pick where you want to save your final animation, and then start going about your business – the thing you want to present on the GIF. When you’re done, just click Stop.
When recording your animated GIFs, keep the following in mind:
- The sequence that you want to present can’t be too long or too complicated. Focus on quick and simple actions.
- Just like with static screenshots, crop only the minimal area you need.
- When recording part of a webpage, use your browser’s zoom-in feature to improve the readability.
- Perform all your on-screen actions slowly. Animated GIFs have low frame rates, and you don’t want to leave out any important details.
3. Loosely related images
Blog post images are not always meant to illustrate what’s being said. Sometimes, you just want to give your readers a visual break that would separate individual sections of the post.
This is where loosely related images come into play. Now, what do I mean by loosely? Those are images that are in tune with the site’s theme/angle/character, but don’t have any direct connection with the topic being discussed.
For instance, if I were to include a break here, I could use an image like this:
Guidelines to follow:
- If you use more than one such photo per blog post, try using only photos that are in the same style.
- Give attribution where it’s due.
- Use the same aspect ratio on all images. (Fine tune them in Paint.NET for example.)
The places to get this kind of photos from:
- Obvious stock repositories like iStock, etc.
- Free repositories. And the king of those is TheStocks.im. The reason why I love this site so much is because it aggregates a number of other sites providing free stocks. In short, it’s the one place where you can find them all.
- Using vintage photos of your own. Just look around your office, or lean out of the window, take a photo of something loosely related, put it through an Instagram filter, and you have yourself a great photo you can use in a blog post. It’s original, fresh, and of high enough quality. Like this one I just took:
4. Hand-drawn images
There’s something great about hand-drawn images, something old-school. Plus, they just convey this another layer of dedication on the author’s part.
The only obstacle, obviously, is that not anyone feels like they can draw something of high enough quality. No sweat though, I’m that guy too, so I’ve come up with a workaround.
Here are some of the types of hand-drawn images I use regularly, plus how I actually create them. Let’s start with the final images first:
- Text-based images to separate sections of a post or the subheadings.
- Re-creating minimalistic flat design graphics available under some kind of a free license.
The source I found (designed by Freepik):
My version:
- Hand-drawn graphs (my no.1 favorite kind of hand-drawn images).
Here’s how I create them and how you can do the same:
- Do some drawing. In a nice notebook or on a nice piece of paper.
- Lay it down on a wooden floor and put the pen next to it.
- Take a photo with your smartphone camera.
- Put the image through an Instagram filter, and save it to your camera roll.
- Crop it and put it in a blog post.
Speaking of graphs…
5. Graphs and charts
Graphs are perfect for illustrating all kinds of data, and it doesn’t even have to be complex data.
For me, there are two methods to create a truly quality graph:
- a) Doing it with a tool called Visme. It’s easy to use, has almost no learning curve and offers all the features you’d need.
- b) Forgetting about tools and apps, and going for the hand-drawn approach instead.
For example, here’s one of my graphs, illustrating that 60 percent of marketers publish at least one piece of content per week:
As you cans see, nothing fancy.
Quick cheat. Still not sure about your drawing skills? Create the graph in anything (Excel, for example), then print it out and trace over it on a new piece of paper – having the original one beneath.
6. Drop-dead obvious stocks
We’ve talked about loosely related images a minute ago, so now let’s have a quick word about stocks.
What I mean by drop-dead obvious stocks is all stock photos that illustrate the text of your blog post almost to the word.
For instance, if your post talks about how to improve one’s negotiation skills, you can use a stock photo of a person during a job interview, shaking the hand of the interviewer. Everyone smiling. And in suits. And young. And attractive.
Now here’s the kicker. Nothing’s wrong with that kind of images. If you already have a subscription to iStock or Fotolia, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take advantage of this. I’d say that using obvious stocks is your no.1 method to make sure that your images are always of super high quality.
7. Background image + text on top
In my opinion, this is the king of all images when it comes to visualizing your blog posts and giving them a truly unique look.
Here are some of the images I’ve created for my posts with the exact titles of the posts on them:
Such images can be used for a variety of purposes:
- As an image you put at the very beginning of the post.
- As the featured image (used in some WordPress themes).
- As the image you share when submitting the post to social news sites.
- As the basis of social media images for the post (more on that in a minute).
How to create such images:
- Get a loosely related image (read point #3 on this list).
- Open it in a tool like Paint.NET or Pixlr.com.
- Pick three fonts:
- bold and thick font (like Arial Black),
- thin font (like Arial Narrow),
- flashy font / hand-written font (like Freestyle Script).
- Place the title of the post in the foreground. If the background is dark, use white font, for light backgrounds, go with black. Also:
- Use the bold font for the main point.
- Use the thin font for words like and, to, for (if it’s visually pleasing).
- Use the flashy font for additional emphasis where it makes sense.
That’s it. All you need is three fonts and some black or white text.
Bonus. Put a watermark on the image if it tickles your fancy.
8. Minimal CG images
Flat design, and minimalism in general has been a true hit of 2014 and the trend is very likely to follow into the future. There’s just something uniquely beautiful about minimal images. They’re clear, easy to grasp, and work great as a brand building tool. They also don’t distract the visitor from the main message that you want to convey in your blog post.
Here’s an example at Codeinwp.com; a featured image for a post talking about landing pages in WordPress:
There’s just a simple text, one-color background and an icon or a graphic that’s related to the post itself.
Building something similar is really simple and quick. Here’s the process:
- Get a nice set of free flat design icons. There’s a load of giveaways on the web. All it takes is a quick Google search.
- Make sure that you can use the icons for commercial purposes and that they are available in high quality (when it comes to icons, that’s 256px+).
- Start with a blank image in Paint.NET or any other similar tool. Make the background single color. Try using pastel colors – they’re a bit friendlier on the eye.
- Use the “three fonts trick” described in the previous point to put the blog’s title or any other text in the image.
- Put one of the icons beneath the text.
For example, here’s the image I created for one of my posts:
9. Infographics
You knew this one was coming…
Infographics are the new black of content marketing. In short, if you’re not using them as part of your content strategy, you’re missing out.
Actually, there’s a couple of awesome posts on this site already explaining the power of infographics and how to create them, so I’m just going to send you over to them instead of pretending that I can explain this better:
- 9 Awesome Reasons to Use Infographics in your Content Marketing
- The 7 Key Elements to Creating Successful Infographics
10. Post-o-graphic
This one, on the other hand, you probably didn’t see coming…
So what’s a post-o-graphic, right?
In simple terms, it’s a kind of post that looks like a simple infographic but underneath it’s built with standard text, HTML, and visuals (images).
Let me just give you an example of a post I wrote at Bidsketch - the guys behind the proposal tools for freelance bloggers:
The screenshot doesn’t do it justice so I urge you to check out the live post – Don’t Take Your Business to the “Next Level”. Even though that post uses a number of visuals to convey its message, it’s also perfectly crawlable by Google, and it works on any device and screen.
Another great thing about post-o-graphics is that because everything is based on simple HTML, they are compatible with any WordPress theme.
How to build them:
- Start with a standard text post.
- Pick the pieces that could benefit from additional visual emphasis. Some possibilities: subheadings, lists, quotes, examples, data, study results, etc.
- Turn those elements into their visual versions, use any of the methods described above.
- Replace the plain-text versions with the visuals.
- Add transitions by using arrows or other visual breakers (you can find free arrow icons on Google).
- Add whitespace to improve readability.
- Use columns, or tables to create some diversity in your content layout (caution; some HTML skill required here).
- Publish the whole thing.
Creating visuals for social media
To close this guide on a high note, let’s have a word on how you can use your blog post visuals on social media.
It’s no mystery that people prefer sharing visual content on social media to sharing standard text content. Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms know this very well, and that’s why they’ve provided us with specific APIs and tools to make our posts more visible on readers’ news feeds.
So, the first thing you need to do is pick the social networks where you want to direct the most of your effort and create a set of images optimized primarily for those networks.
The how-to:
- Here’s a great guide on what works on which network, along with the specific details on how to create optimized social media images.
- If you want to go the extra mile and possibly multiply your results, here’s another guide listing some unusual content marketing tips on how to use visual content on social media.
What’s your way of handling blog post visuals?
That’s it for this guide, but I’m very curious to hear your opinion on blog post visuals. How do you visualize your blog posts right now? Is there anything you’re struggling with?
Guest author: Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a freelance blogger and writer, published author, and a team member at Bidsketch (proposal software) – helping small businesses, freelancers and consultants create great looking and functional client proposals.
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5 Key Elements For Creating a Compelling Call To Action to Increase Subscribers and Sales
Buttons surround us everywhere. Despite modern devices are more and more focused on the touch-and-tap technique, we still use buttons to turn on the TV or the air conditioner. The main thing about such buttons is that we use them because we want to perform some action, e.g. to get to a certain floor on elevator or make the TV louder.
Call-to-action buttons on website work some other way. These buttons are made to catch users’ attention and push them to perform the action a website owner needs. CTA’s usually contain text that explains users what action they have to perform. You may spot call-to-action buttons mostly on conversion-oriented websites and pages, e.g. landing page. But in general, any button that contains an invitation to perform an action may be called a CTA button.
The most often used types of call-to-action buttons
Here are the 3 most used calls to action.
- “Buy Now” buttons. It’s the most common type of a call-to-action element that is used on most eCommerce websites. You can come across such buttons on landing pages created to promote a certain product. The Buy Now button is also placed on a product page to push a visitor to purchase this product;
- “Learn More/Explore” buttons. This type of buttons encourages users to go for more info about a product, brand or other topics. It’s often used when you need to hide away large pieces of data, e.g. book description, blog post, brand’s history etc. Learn More buttons can be used for landing pages or banners to guide users to other pages where they can read full description of the product, get purchase conditions or subscription details;
- “Subscribe/Register” buttons. Specific buttons that are mostly used in combination with registration forms. They may be added to banners and popups that encourage users to register to website or subscribe to a newsletter.
All these types of buttons may be used in combination with other conversion elements. Sometimes call-to-action elements may be presented in a form of text links. Today they are rarely used due to the popularity of mobile devices. Text links are not the best CTAs for smaller screen sizes in terms of UX.
Taking user experience into account is vital if you wish to increase conversions. You should learn your audience and find ways of appealing to various types of buyers. HelpScout presented a few types of internet customers based on their consumer behavior in a cool infographic.
24% of so-called “Tightwads” is one of the most difficult audiences for a marketer. These buyers are characterized by having a very low pain threshold in terms of spending money. You have to use some psychological tricks to make those users part with their money.
Here are some tips to create compelling call to action designs and copy that will work for various types of customers.
1. Where do you place that call to action?
It’s been a long time practice of placing all vital elements above the fold. Latest surveys show that this tradition isn’t necessarily true and may not lead to higher conversions. Michael Aagaard provided a test for a B2C landing page where he changed the position of a call-to-action button and placed it below the fold. The results were unexpected: conversions increased by 304%.
Due to this experiment, Michael came to a conclusion: your CTA shouldn’t be necessarily placed above the fold. Instead, try to match the place of a call-to-action element with the complexity of your offer or product.
Thus, if your offer requires presenting a large batch of data, it’s better to give time to users to digest the info they got and make a decision in the end of reading. And vice versa, simple offer that doesn’t requires a lot of thinking to make a purchasing decision may use a CTA above the fold.
Another good idea is having several call-to-action buttons across a long landing page. Today many website pages make use of heavy scrolling. This trend again is connected with the use of mobile devices that make scrolling a better UX than clicking. So, using a few CTA for a landing page that relies on scrolling can be a great idea. Just one consideration: use the same text for all CTAs on one page to avoid user confusing.
2. What text should you include in the call to action?
One of the reasons why people don’t click your call-to-action button may be that it doesn’t really call to any action.
You may come across multiple examples on the Web when CTAs use such messages like “Free trial” or “Demo”. Such buttons don’t appeal to customers. They don’t push people to act.
So, one general rule here is:
“Add a verb that refers to users and really calls them to act”.
However, not any text with a call may work today. Most standard phrases like “Download”, “Add to Cart” or “Click Here” are too trite and boring. Human mind doesn’t perceive them as urgent calls. You should think of creating a personalized custom CTA that will set you apart of your rivals, drive users attention and make them wanna click that button. Use of personal pronouns, like Me, You, Yours, Us, is very helpful to add a personal touch.
Consider using clear message to unambiguously tell people what action they have to perform. Sometimes tried and true “Sign In”, “Register” or “Play Now” are better than some whimsical messages.
3. What colors do the button and text need to be?
Color is one of the most powerful instruments in web design. Bad choice of color palette may ruin your design and scare people away instead of making them clicking. Good choice of color for a CTA button as well as for its text makes a button easily noticeable.
Using contrasting colors is the easiest solution. But there can be one pitfall: some designers choose too bright colors for buttons and text. Such choice may have a reversed effect and keep people from clicking. There are tons of tutorials and infographics on color theory and color psychology on the Web that you can use for choosing a perfect color combination for your call to action elements.
In any case, darker text on a lighter background is an evergreen classics while lighter text on a darker button may evoke a strong emotional reaction.
4. What button shapes work?
Traditionally, websites feature rectangular buttons. The button shape may become a perfect design element and raise certain emotions. They can be that psychological driver that impacts user’s desire to click a button or to leave a page.
Usually, rectangular elements speak of reliability, traditionalism and balance. Circular elements create soft, friendly and calming atmosphere.
More fanciful buttons’ shapes should be justified from the design aspect. And don’t forget that you should make CTA buttons look clickable. If the buttons doesn’t look like a button then no one will click it.
5. How big should your call to action button be?
When it comes to CTA buttons, many may think that “the bigger – the better” principle should work here. But oversized buttons may create a feeling of pressure and seem too “aggressive” for users. This may hurt the UX. so If you don’t wish to frustrate your visitors try to choose the button size wisely.
Responsiveness is another consideration you should never forget when choosing a size for a call-to-action button. This element should look well-balanced with your design and be comfortable to use on smaller screens.
You can always make a smaller CTA button visible with a use of whitespace. This classic technique allows drawing attention to important element and making it noticeable. In terms of responsive design, whitespace surround a button and makes it easier to tap without touching other elements.
These are some easy tips for making your call-to-action work for you. You may want to use only a few of them or the whole batch. But don’t forget to test your choices to find the best solution that fits your webpage design, your goals and audience.
Guest Author: Julia Blake is an experienced writer of many articles related to web design and development, usability, trends, inspiration, etc. She likes learning and sharing her knowledge with others. Follow her on Twitter.
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10 Reasons Why You Should Spend $10 Per Week on Facebook Advertising
Imagine spending months writing a novel and having an esteemed journalist for the New York Times review your book. You are a nervous wreck waiting for the criticism or praise. After several weeks, you finally get a hand written letter from the writer stating that it is a masterpiece and one of the greatest books he has reviewed.
There is one problem though. The New York Times writer will not go public with the review since he is retiring in two weeks. You know you have a masterpiece since this journalist is one of the harshest critics but how are you going to promote it now?
Would you be upset if you wrote one of the greatest novels of all time but couldn’t get anybody to read it? You better believe it!
This is an issue that exists with social media marketers in 2015. Users are creating great content but nobody is seeing it unless a solid strategy is in place to promote it.
The decline of Facebook organic reach
One of the reasons for the lack of reach is the decline of organic posts for businesses on Facebook. Nonprofits have even referred to the Facebook organic decline as “Catastrophic” as their newsfeed visibility vanishes.
Here is a chart from everything-pr.com showing the big impact of the decline in Facebook organic reach.
Facebook has the potential to be a great source of web traffic for your business that can increase brand awareness and generate leads. If you have the extra change in your pocket, start investing $10 per week onto this social channel; otherwise, nobody will see your masterpiece!
Below are 10 reasons why you should start shelling out $10 per week for Facebook advertising.
1. More traffic to your website
It is one thing to get great interaction on your Facebook page after posting a picture of a cute dog. It is a completely different ballgame when you can drive high quality traffic to your site from social efforts.
According to Facebook, pages organically reach about 16% of their fans on average.
A boosted post will hit a lot more of your followers along with their friends.
When you boost a Facebook and do it in a clever way to draw people to your website, there is also the potential that people will share your message, which will result in a greater reach.
MGM Resorts was able to accomplish amazing results by driving people to its website through Facebook advertising.
- Over 5X return on ad spend using Custom Audiences targeting its customers on Facebook
- 4X return on ad spend using lookalike audiences
- 3X return on ad spend using Facebook Offers
- 15X return on ad spend using Facebook Exchange
- 2 fans acquired organically for every fan gained through Facebook media
If your goal is to generate website traffic, there will be an option to “Drive Traffic to Your Website” in Facebook’s advertising portal and they will optimize the campaign to get more people to your site.
Without a Facebook advertising campaign in place, MGM would have never achieved such great success on social.
2. High quality traffic
With Facebook’s advanced targeting options, you have the capability to drive people to your website who will be interested in your product or services.
If you own a baby clothing retailer, promote the posts and target mothers with children ages 0-2 years old, your exact demographic.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
Find your target demographic; create compelling content and start to see the high quality traffic flood into your website. Just like the Peter F. Drucker quote mentioned about, you need to understand the customer so well that the Facebook advertisement will seem native within his or her newsfeed.
Gauge Google Analytics to determine how long the user is staying on your site and set-up conversion tracking on Facebook to see if they reach the end goal. If you can’t get the user to stay on your site for a long period of time or generate a conversion based off of your goals, it is time to go back to the drawing board.
High quality traffic on Facebook would be tough to come by for a business if they are not promoting a post for at least $10.
3. No more wasted time
Does it make sense for a company to hire a social media specialist for $40,000 to create compelling social content and give this person a $0 advertising budget? Absolutely not, this will result in a disastrous hire.
The biggest mistake we see businesses make is they invest in the resources to create the content but there is no strategy or money behind it.
With a $10 weekly budget, you can test what works and what doesn’t work on Facebook. You won’t be like this guy who wasted $600,000 on Facebook advertising. If your advertisement fails, it is only $10 down the drain.
Once you start to see success with the small budget, you can always increase the budget if there are positive results.
Create a compelling strategy and promote one post per week for $10. Take notes of what works and what doesn’t work and continue to tinker with your campaign until you have found success!
4. More exposure
We ran an experiment where we made two similar posts on Facebook… One post had a $10 budget behind it and the other received no promotion at all. The promoted post, which targeted Facebook “Likes” of a specific page and their friends, reached 146 times the amount of people!
The messaging was literally identical and the small budget behind the post was a game changer.
There have been claims where the organic reach on Facebook only reaches 2% of fans.
Even more reason to start boosting your posts for $10!
Please tell me how you can invest $10 more wisely when it comes to advertising than to reach 146 people with a message instead of 1? I think you’ll be hard pressed to do so on a shoestring budget.
5. Social shares
I’m sure you have all heard the saying, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” Well, on social media, there kind of is!
According to Kiss Metrics, more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month. When you start advertising your content, you can get in on the sharing fun! With a greater reach and more visibility, your brand will start to receive more exposure in the news feed and more people will share your content (if it is compelling).
The beauty of social media is the sharing element. If you have great content and put some money behind it, the possibilities are endless. The larger your audience, the greater likelihood there will be for more social shares.
6. More sales
Some people might have a simple goal of driving more traffic to a blog while others might go more in-depth trying to generate sales form social. If you have fans on your page that are already brand advocates, if you promote a post to this audience for $10, the majority will see the message and if the offer is good, make a purchase.
MGM saw a 3X return on ad spend using Facebook advertising. Even though they are a large brand, they made a great offer to a defined audience and reaped the benefits.
Before diving into creating a sale, Facebook offers great tips on defining your goals, measuring your ads, tracking conversions and creative tips.
After you pondered all of the objectives for your campaign, try promoting an irresistible special offer to just your Facebook fans for $10 and start tracking the sales. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results if you execute the strategy properly.
7. Better content
Focus on promoting just one piece of content per week. You need to make sure this Facebook post is darn good so you get the best bang for your buck. Instead of making seven mediocre posts over the course of the week, if you put all of your energy into one post and promote it so it can gain some traction, you will see much better results.
Avinash Kaushik, the author of Web Analytics 2.0, stated that, “content is anything that adds value to the readers life”.
Take this quote to heart when you are targeting a specific audience on Facebook.
8. Landing pages
When you are promoting a post for $10, ask yourself how are you going to capture the lead so they either make a purchase or enter their contact information that you will have for future marketing purposes.
Signing up for a service like ShortStack, Unbounce or Lead Pages is a great way to create custom landing pages that will relate to your advertising copy.
According to Unbounce, only 44% of companies use split testing software when it comes to advertising. If you truly want to capitalize on your paid traffic from Facebook, start creating landing pages where you can send the traffic to!
9. More chatter
What happens when your Facebook posts reach more people and start to get shared by your audience? More people will talk about your brand! Just look at the comments the next time you make a $10 promoted post.
Businesses can actually improve conversion rates by replying to comments. This was a feature that was added by Facebook in May of 2013.
Prompt the users to answer a question and you will be thrilled with the response compared to an organic post.
10. More fun
Social media marketing is fun! But there is nothing worse than thinking of a great idea for a social campaign and nobody recognizing it.
If you are a Facebook marketer, I can GUARANTEE you will be more fulfilled with your marketing efforts if you start advertising with at least $10 per week. Try boosting a post compared to trying to generate organic social chatter. With gas prices being low and consumers saving money at the pump, investing into social media marketing can be a great way to increase your business!
Don’t be like the author with the great book that nobody ever read. Start promoting at least one Facebook post per week for $10 and you will start to see a drastic difference in your social marketing efforts.
Author: Jason Parks is the owner of The Media Captain, a social marketing, web design and search engine optimization agency.
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Missed the last Webinar? - Discover the 3 Steps to LinkedIn Mastery
Don’t worry, we are running another one very soon!
It’s at a new time that will allow those of you who were sleeping at the last one to get a look in!
Over the past couple of months I’ve received a ton of emails from readers asking me to share more insight in and around LinkedIn so I’ve decided to hold another webinar with Alex Pirouz, founder of Linkfluencer.
The first one I held a few months back was well received with over 3000 people registering for the session. Click here to register
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